MONITORING THE RIGHT TO LIFE 2023

The aim of our work at the Human Rights Observatory is to work for Memory and Justice for the victims of the Euro-African Western Border, their families, and communities. In this chapter, we compile the objectives and the main figures of the report: 6,618 victims, 363 women, 384 children, and 18 victims per day.

What is behind this unprecedented mortality? We analyze the different practices of what we know as necropolitics: omission of the duty to help, externalization of borders, the cynicism of passive search, the criminalization of solidarity and other forms of provoking deaths that are on the rise in fortress Europe encouraged by the new migratory treaties.

The routes across the Atlantic to the Canaries remain by far the deadliest. We have broken them down into a long chapter to address the specific characteristics of each of them.

The route from Agadir to Dakhla is mostly done in inflatable boats that pose a greater risk of instability and sinking, requiring greater speed in activating rescue services. This often does not happen.

The route of the cayuco boats, which begins on the coast of Senegal, has been one of the protagonists in the second half of the year. Political instability in this country and extractive fishing by foreign countries have led to increased departures, with many young people and adolescents using the canoes previously used for fishing.

Also, during the second half of the year, there was an increase in the number of boats leaving Mauritania for the island of El Hierro, mainly with people in transit through this country.

One of the longest and most dangerous routes is that of the Gambia, which is activated in mid-October in boats with large numbers of people on board of different nationalities such as Gambia, Senegal, Mali, Guinea Bissau, and Guinea Conakry.

In the Mediterranean, we have also broken down the different routes to offer a more exhaustive analysis of each.

The most important in terms of the number of victims is the Algerian route, which suffers from invisibility on the part of the Spanish state authorities, who respond to families and organizations with a systematic lack of transparency.

The Strait of Gibraltar route is characterized by the precariousness of the means used to reach Spain, mainly by rowing dinghies and swimming to Ceuta. The non-activation of rescue resources increases these highly dangerous practices.

On the Alboran route, the attempts to swim to Melilla account for most of the victims due to the special precariousness of these crossing systems.

This year has been particularly tragic, and we wanted to summarize it in a compilation of the words that have most marked us in our work and in our relationship with the victims’ families and communities.